Friday, 28 March 2008

長寿祝い Special Birthdays For The Long Lived

Good Day!

Today I am telling you about a really nice little thing in the Japanese language. Once a person gets 60 years old, she/he is considered to have passed all aspects of life on earth once. This is because with 60 you will have experienced all possible combinations of the 10 干 calender signs with the 12 支 zodiac animals. So you count as experienced in life and bound to have gathered some wisdom, that is reason enough to start celebrating certain special birthdays for the long lived getting older than that.

Now the funny thing is, most of those special birthday consist of one Kanji with a certain meaning plus the Kanji for long life 寿 Ju, which curiously enough, you can also find in 寿司 Sushi. Not enough the first Kanji has usually a little Kanji game into it resembling both the age of the birthday and bearing a meaning at the same time.

The 60th birthday itself is celebrated with 還暦 KANREKI, which means just what I explained you above, the 10 干 calender sings and the 12 支 animal circles have been completed once in every possible combination.

Apart from this the birthday Kanji often has this little Kanji game into it, which I mentioned. For example the 77. birthday is called 喜寿 where 喜 KI means enjoy, like, love, joy. So 77 is a very joyful birthday. However the Kanji 喜 was written differently in the 平安時代 Heian Era (794 - 1192).Back than it was written . 七 means seven, so the Kanji is written like three times seven. Now the Kanji 十 means ten and looks almost like seven. So with some imagination you can see 七十七 in the old version, which means 77. ^_^

Now for some quiz:Yet another birthday is written 米寿 BEIJU. But at which age do you celebrate BEIJU? For what age does 米 BEI (rice) stand for?The solution is written below in white color, so just mark the text with your mouse, when you are giving up.

For people not familiar with Japanese/Chinese Kanji, who want to do the Quiz too, here are the Kanji for the numbers from 1 to 100.

1:一 2:二 3:三 4:四 5:五 6:六 7:七 8:八 9:九 10:十 100:百

########################################米 BEI (rice) when written fast and hurriedly looks like #八#十#八#and thus its the 88th birthday Kanji^_^#######################################

And one more quiz, the other way round.The 99th birthday is celebrated with 白寿 HAKUJU, where 白 HAKU means white. But why? The Kanji has no resemblance whatsoever to 99 九十九? Can you guess why 白 HAKU was chosen?

########################################100 in Kanji is 百 HYAKU (100) and 1 is 一 ICHI (1).#Now if you subtract 1 from 100, you of course get 99.#So let's do it:#百 - 一 = 白#######################################

Here is a table I found with the rest of the special Birthday Kanji.Some of them are really funny. And you see that they reach as far as 120 大還暦, which means you finished the cycle of life twice and are probably already considered a god or dead ^_^.